


Franklin 

















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FRANKLIN BOOTH 











A. HARPER 


FRANKLIN BOOTH 


Franklin Boot 


SIXTY REPRODUCTIONS FROM ORIGINAL DRAWINGS 
WITH AN APPRECIATION BY EARNEST ELMO CALKINS 
AND AN INTRODUCTION BY MEREDITH NICHOLSON 








MOMXXV = ROBERT “FRANK @< > PUBLISHER 


Palehel EOE ON) BASS (Tf FO RS Te Ish To Sta REE Eels Ne Baw ee te O nnn bs 
















4 COPYRIGHT 4 
f >. ROBERT FRANK 

i 1925 

a PRINTEDIN 

UNITED STATES 

#. 


OF AMERICA 


It has been my aim from the outset to represent the work of 
Mr. Franklin Booth as truthfully as possible by using the best 
available means of reproduction. In this undertaking I have been 
generously assisted by the Firm and Staff of The Walker Engrav- 
ing Company, who, fully realizing the importance of showing 
the delicacy of the line so characteristic of Mr. Booth’s designs, 
have, in making the plates, faithfully followed the original 
drawings of the artist in every detail. And Mr. William Edwin 
Rudge, in printing this book, has taken great pains to make it 
worthy of the artist’s work. 

Thanks are also due to those for whom the original drawings 
were made and by whose courtesy they are here shown, their 


names are mentioned in the List of Illustrations. 


ROBERT FRANK 











att are familiar with the signature of Franklin Booth. In fact, the signatute 
is superfluous on any design by this artist because his style is so individual 
and so exclusively his own that everyone recognizes it at sight. 

Mr. Booth is a pen-and-ink artist who produces his effects by numerous fine 
lines, something in the spirit of the old steel engravers but with fat mote freedom. 
His marked quality is his craftsmanship, his feeling for design. He creates an 
agreeable pattern, and gives his pattern its different values by his use of many fine 
lines of different strengths and differently spaced. He is attracted by architectural 
form—the architecture of Nature equally with that of man. His cathedrals sug- 
gest the grandeur of a mighty forest, while his pictures of trees bring to mind that 
groves were God's first temples. There is a quality in his work that enhances and 
spiritualizes its subject, and on that account it is employed largely by advertisers 
who wish to give to their advertising a tinge of the ideal. His drawings are designs 
rather than pictures or illustrations. They form an almost perfect setting for type. 
The pen lines of the artist and the faces of the type harmonize completely, espe- 
cially if Mr. Booth has been allowed to select the face of type and the placing of 
it. The effect is exquisite and refined, and it adds a rare and decorative quality to 
the page. 

Mr. Booth has done more than almost any one man to break down the barrier 
between the pure art of decoration as applied to the book or magazine page and 
the same att applied to the advertising page. Anything undertaken by him 1s 
approached in the same creative spirit and executed with the same sute touch. 
He lacks entirely the condescending attitude toward advertising art. He considers 
a pipe organ as glorious a subject as an oak tree, and when he has finished with it, 
it is. Designs, borders, decorations framing and embellishing an advertising page 
ate in no way inferior to those applied to the enrichment of a poem or a bit of 
literatute. 

It is his sincerity, this belief in himself and in the integrity of his commission, 
that has kept his work on so high a plane. Designs by him made for advertising 
putposes are sought by collectors with the same eagerness as designs for less mate- 
tial purposes, for they have the same quality. 

Mr. Booth possesses to a rate degree the power of expressing in design or 
picture an idea, an abstract conception. He illustrates not so much things as 
thoughts. 

He is much sought after by advertisers and art directors because his peculiar 


a HOSE who follow magazine decoration and the better aspects of advertising 


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and individual style is successfully practiced by no one else. His imitators are man ve ee 
They copy his technique, but they lack his inspiration. | 

His two great qualities are his dexterity with his pen and his i imaginatio nt ae 
His work appeals to the spirit. It has an uplifting effect. It suggests something aha ' 
just beyond, an ideal almost realized. His fine craftsmanship never becomes mete _ ‘: 
dexterity. It remains always, as it should be, the instrument for expressing a fine _ 
creative imagination. a 





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HEN Franklin Booth’s work first met my eye—it was something like 

twenty yeats ago—I was puzzled and mystified. The pen-and-ink 

sketches, hung in an exhibition of well-known illustrators and cartoon- 
ists, struck me—a layman—as distinguished by qualities not to be satisfactorily ex- 
plained in terms of method and technique. I have since followed this attist’s career 
with the greatest interest but without ever plucking the heart from the mystery. 
Nor does it greatly matter, for it is probably best to accept his creations with 
gratitude for the delight to be found in them without troubling to explain their 
charm or a certain haunting quality which is beyond any mere trick of draughts- 
manship. However, after turning the leaves of this collection, I am moved to 
remark that Nature probably intended Booth fora poet of the contemplative order, 
but, in a perverse mood, changed her mind and bade him exercise his talents in 
line rather than in rhyme and meter. But even on this assumption the great mother 
suffered at least partial defeat, for the poet was not silenced but utters himself un- 
mistakably in this medium, of which he has made himself a master. 

It is consoling to find in this age of realism fresh and stimulating proof of the 
contention of Keats that beauty and truth are interchangeable terms. Mr. Booth’s 
veracity is never to be questioned; he is almost uncannily accurate; what he sees he 
presents truthfully and vividly; but with the realization of this comes at once a 
consciousnéss of the mystical, the inescapable suggestion of something elusive and 
indefinable that is the charm of all that he produces. He has, for example, so treated 
a modern city—lifted and idealized—as to suggest the capital of some island—valley 
of Avalon or an unattainable Carcassonne. Perhaps in the terminology of music 
tather than in that of art or literature one might more readily find appropriate and 
descriptive words for Booth’s talent. If he were a musician the violin would, we 
ate sure, be his instrument. 

It is amazing that line, unaided by color, can be so employed as to touch the 
imagination as Booth rarely fails to touch it. The restrictions of his medium ate no 
hindrance to the indication of space and distance. In the architectural pieces, in 
which perhaps his talent speaks most authoritatively, he communicates with 
singular felicity the sense of height and breadth and of the play of light and 
shadow fading into the light that never was on sea or land. 

We have in these drawings no mere sketchiness or trifling memoranda, but 
in evety instance a satisfying completeness and adequacy. With all his delicacy, 
which can be that of the cobweb’s fineness, Booth imparts remarkably the sense of 
solidity—in a wall, a pillar or the trunk ofa tree. It may be that full justice has not 
















9 oi 4 

; Ran <9 OEY i iy 

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mye aaa le Sf ar. 
; . | 





been done to the landscape of that Indiana of which Booth is a native son as a 
stimulus to the imagination and the sense of beauty. Lincoln's spirit must have 
drawn something from it in those fourteen formative years through which he 
dreamed his dream in the Hoosier forest. The great number of votaries who had 
poured libations at the altar of literature in Indiana have obscured the considerable 
company of artists who knew the world of beauty first as they caught hints of it 
in the Hoosier fields, hills and woodlands. William M. Chase, Eugene Savage and ° 
Wayman Adams are of this company and, of the same fellowship, Booth is not 
without his debt to the fugitive spirit of place as it hovers along the Wabash and 
Tippecanoe and has found such interpreters in song as James Whitcomb Riley and 
Maurice Thompson. 

While living on the farm Booth began contributing illustrations, accompan- 
ied with light verse, to the Indianapolis News. This was followed, a year later, by 
three months of study at the Art Institute of Chicago and the next year by about 
three months of work at the Art Students’ League in New York. Then camea year 
and a half of newspaper work and a summer in Europe. An artist's biography is 
best read in his work, and, remembering Mr. Booth’s first drawings, launched from 
the farm on which he was born and where he spent twenty-six years of his life, I 
am moved to remark that in fields of ripening corn and in the mixed forests about 
the old homestead, he found not only his inspiration but was, in a mannet of 
speaking, instructed by Nature in person in the value of line and in the infinite 
possibilities of light and shadow. Franklin Booth, it may be said, has perfected his 
‘ own method. His drawings seem so effortless—the mark of the tool is so hidden 
—that they impart a conviction of spontaneity, as if they had not been “done”, but 
had appeared magically upon the paper. 

Hete, indeed, is a most companionable collection of drawings, a book for fre- 
quent meditative recurrence, recording and interpreting a remarkable variety of 
beguiling scenes and episodes. His work illustrates the poverty of a camera where 
it is necessaty to capture the impressions and moods of a questing and poetic spirit. 
It is Mr. Booth’s high achievement that he satisfies not only the visual sense but 
indicates so often as to establish a characteristic, a consciousness of gracious and 
beautiful things—of “meadows never won nor wandered in” or the poignant 
echoes of a solemn recessional fading to silence in some vast cathedral. 


MEREDITH NICHODRSGs 





LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 


The figures indicate the sizes of the original drawings in inches. In italics are shown 
names of the firms for whom the drawings were made and by whose courtesy they are 
here used. The vignette on this page was made for the title page of ‘“The Flying Islands 
of the Night,’’ by James Whitcomb Riley, published by The Bobbs Merrill Company. 


TZ 


te, 


COVER DESIGN . 34x 7% . Booklet : : ; .  Hickey-Freeman 
THE PINES. 10% x 1114 . Poem , ; P ; Scribner's Magazine 
THE WOODLAND. 10% x14}4.Pom . <= . Good Housekeeping 
PROSPECT . 10 x 1214 . Advertisement : ; . Montgomery Ward & Co. 
ADVENTURE .7%x10%.Poem . 4 ‘ : . Sunday Magazine 
HAPPINESS . 94 x 12. Advertisement : : : _N.W. Ayer & Son 
CHURCH . 8% x 12% . Advertisement. : : ; . Estey Organ Co. 
BURIAL HILL . 10% x11%4.Poem . : ; : . Collier's Weekly 
ILLUSTRATION . 8 x1134.Story . : : : American Magazine 
THE DREAM .10%x14%.Poem . ; : ; Good Housekeeping 
ECHOES . 11% x 1434 . Advertisement : : ; . Estey Organ Co. 


LINCOLN, AFTER BORGLUM . 11 x 14% . Advertisement Billings & Spencer 
STEPS TO THE TOMB. 11 x16; Poem) : : . Good Housekeeping 








14 
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16 
17 
18 
23 
20 
21 
22 
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24 
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26 
27 
28 
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30 
31 
32. 
33 
34 
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36 
37 
38 
a2 
40 
41 
42 


LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS . Continued 


DOMESTICITY . 614 x 10% . Article . 

ARTS AND CRAFTS . 6% x 10% . Article 
THE LITTLE HOUSE . 8% x 11 . Poem 
NEIGHBORS . 814 x 10% . Poem 

THE HOUSE OF RIMMON . 5% x 10. Poem 
THE HOUSE OF RIMMON . 54 x 10. Poem 
THE END OF THE WAY . 9% x 14% . Poem 
THE LILIES . 9% x 14. Poem 

WELCOME . 11 x 1434 . Poem 

MEMORIAL . 1634 x 2134 . Newspaper 

THE PLANTATION . 834 x9. Poem. 
SOLITUDE . 1034 x 114 . Poem. 
LAMENTATION . 10% x 14 . Study in Charcoal 


. Good Housekeeping 
: eer Housekeeping 
. Good Housekeeping 
. Good Housekeeping 
Scribner's Magazine 
Scribner's Magazine 
. Good Housekeeping 
. Good Housekeeping 
. Good Housekeeping 
L. Bamberger &% Co. 
Scribner's Magazine 
. Good Housekeeping 


UNSEEN FOUNDATIONS . 1034 x 1534 . Study in Wash 
THE GATES . 1034 x 14. Study in Pen-and-ink and Crayon 


ORGAN . 114% x 14% . Advertisement. 
NIPPON GARDEN . 1034 x 13 . Story 
NIPPON GARDEN . 54 x 1034 . Story 
RURAL ROMANCE . 8 x 8% . Story . 


A REMEMBERED DREAM . 834 x 10% . Poem. 


BARTHELMESS . 1034 x 1034 . Advertisement 
THE POND. 4% x 54 . Fiction. 

BURIAL . 9 x 934 . Poem 

AT PRAYER . 21 x 1534 . Poem. : 


A REMEMBERED DREAM . 9% x 154 . Poem. 


WAR . 834 x 9. Poem. 

HUNTING THE TIGERS . 534 x 9% . Story 
HUNTING THE TIGERS . 934 x 1534 . Story 
THE HEALED ONES . 834 x 10! . Poem . 


Estey Organ Co. 
Scribner's Magazine 
Scribner's Magazine 
American Magazine 
Scribner's Magazine 

First National Pictures 
Gems of Russian Literature 
. Good Housekeeping 

. Good Housekeeping 

. Good Housekeeping 

. Good Housekeeping 
McClure’s Magazine 
McClure’s Magazine 

. Good Housekeeping 


LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS +: Continued 


CHEATED . 10 x 14% . Poem 


HARBOR IN THE MORNING . 4% x 6. Story. 


MARSEILLES . 54 x 6% . Story. 


GARDEN AT PONTA DELGADA . 5% x 834 . Story 


THE NEW HOUSE. 11% x 16. Poem 
ORGAN . 10% x 13% . Advertisement. 
FLUTES . 104 x 1334 . Advertisement. 
EASTER PRAYER . 534 x 934 . Editorial 
WOMEN AND WAR. 6% x9. Article 
DAWN . 9x12. Poem 

HAND OF THE WORLD. 9x 14% . Article 
WHEATFIELD . 9% x 10% . Advertisement 
THE HILLS OF HOLLAND. 734 x 12 . Poem 
HARVEST TIME . 5 x 1034 . Article . 
HARVEST TIME . 5 x 1034. Article . 
BORDER DESIGN . 1134 x 17 . Editorial 
COVER DESIGN . 534 x9. Booklet . 
DECORATION . 4 x 9 . Advertisement 


. Good Housekeeping 
. Century Magazine 
. Century Magazine 
. Century Magazine 
. Good Housekeeping 
Estey Organ Co. 
Estey Organ Co. 
Pictorial Review 


. Good Housekeeping 


. Smithsonian Institution 


American Magazine 
. Procter &% Gamble 
. Harper's Magazine 
. Good Housekeeping 
. Good Housekeeping 

Collzer’s Weekly 

Hickey-Freeman 


Paramount Pictures 














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17 NEIGHBORS 


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47 THE NEW HOUSE 












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52 DAWN 








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53 HAND OF THE WORLD 





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